HERMIT You can have a man with ingenuity and adaptability - or you can have a man you can depend on. But not a man who is both! by J. T. MciNTOSH

When the ship first showed on the screens, he naturally didn't believe there was really a ship. Two thousand light-years from the nearest inhabited world you didn't expect to see unannounced ships. However, he ran to the slushpile at once in case he'd missed a warning about some possible, if unlikely, official visit. If he had, he missed it again. This was easy to do, the slushpile being a stack three feet high.

Back at the screen, he saw it was no longer possible to doubt that what he had seen was a ship. He had the usual moment of shock, excitement, anticipation and fear as the thought flashed through his mind - as it flashed through the minds of most watchers of the skies when they saw a ship where no ship had any right to be - that this might be the first contact with a nonhuman culture.

But as usual the ship proved to possess familiar, obviously human-designed contours. She was a small, slow two-jetter, probably a tender from a larger vessel, and she was making straight for Experimental Station 47.

"That puts you right on the horns of a dilemma, son," Duncan Clement said aloud. By the time you'd done nearly ten months out of a year's solo duty, you were doing all right if the worst you did was talk to yourself. "Officially you've got no choice but to blast that ship right out of space. But if you do that you'll be told afterwards that while you were technically in the right, anybody with any sense would have at least tried to find out what ship she was and where she was from before blasting her. And you'll also be told that you might at least have given her a chance to stay clear."

He didn't have to switch on the radio. Already it was automatically beaming a stentorian command:

IDENTIFY YOURSELF AT ONCE. IDENTIFY YOURSELF OR BE DESTROYED. IDENTIFY. ..

The automatic message gave nothing away. It did not announce: "This is Experimental Station 47." The recipient of the message, if any, might not know.

There was no answer from the ship.

From the information automatically being collected about her, Duncan said that she must, as he had suspected, be an escape vessel or landing craft from a larger ship. Her range could be no more than half a light-year.

What such a vessel was doing three thousand light-years from any regular cargo and passenger run was anybody's guess.

The radar and other warning devices being extremely efficient and the ship being very slow, Clement had plenty of time to consider what he was going to do. Not, however, nearly enough time to report to HQ on Earth and get an answer. By roboradio that took about eleven hours and he had less than two to spare.

His orders left him no discretion. Had the ship been alien - well, that would have been different. Even Terran HQ balked at the idea of giving ESOs ironclad orders about how to deal with a situation of such significance and uncertainty. The ship not being alien, Clement was permitted merely to warn her to stay clear. If she did not acknowledge his messages and did not stay clear, his only choice was the precise method of her execution. ES47 being a weapon-testing station, this choice was wide indeed.

He was not allowed to fire warning shots of any kind. These might provoke retaliation, retaliation which might - miracles sometimes happened - do some damage. When he struck, the first stroke was supposed to be final.

But Experimental Station Officer Duncan Clement was in no hurry to execute the standing order appropriate to the circumstances. He was not afraid of the little ship. Her potential power, umpteen million miles from one of the greatest arsenals in space, was negligible.

First he checked the slushpile more carefully.

Experimental (Weapon-testing) Stations, most of which could be reached only through hyperspace, were safe from inspection by top brass, but they could not expect any mercy in the matter of orders, memoranda and special instructions. Like all other military depots, ES47 received month after month reams and reams of messages from scores of heads of departments. Since the entire staff of each station consisted of one man and since the messages received would have required an office staff of five for proper attention, nothing was ever done about the slushpile.

The memoranda piled themselves neatly in stacks which the ES Officer never even looked at unless, as in this case, something happened.

Urgent messages, for immediate attention, were automatically delivered to the ESO in his quarters whenever they arrived. But since the Colnmunications Officer at HQ was human, urgent messages were reserved for urgency, despite the requests of various heads of departments all of whom believed that nothing mattered except their own line, and that anything that happened in their department, however small, was of galactic importance.

Clement scanned back over the memoranda with the Security code on them. He found three reminders that unidentified ships which approached secret stations must be blasted out of space before they got near enough to do any damage, and he also found an instruction that if any ships were sighted their presence must immediately be reported to HQ with the fullest possible details about their size, armament, type and nationality.

(Please supply the following information before I destroy you.)

Then he found a message which he read carefully.

An organization known as the Peace Convention has opened a campaign of what it calls active pacifism. All personnel are warned that this organization has the frank aim of destruction of all military installations which could be used in war. As yet Peace Convention agents have been careful to safeguard the lives of military operatives while attempting to destroy war potential, but it must be remembered that these men are fanatics who believe that the means justifies the end.

To ES Officers only: Experimental (Weapon-testing) Stations, containing a vast amount of armament and war material generally and manned by a single officer, would seem to be a glittering goal to Peace Convention agents.

The latter have shown themselves reluctant to destroy large numbers of men in putting relatively small quantities of water material out of action. Their record, however, indicates that the destruction of the material contained in any Experimental Station at the price of the death of a single ESO would seem highly desirable to the Convention. Special vigilance is recommended.

The memorandum was dated three months previous. "So," said Clement aloud. "We had no choice anyway but to destroy any ship we saw. Now we've got even less."

He went back to the radio, which was still sending out its strident command. No reply had been recorded.

Cutting off the automatic signal, he sent a live message.

"You in the ship, whoever you are," he said, "I'm going to give you five minutes to start talking. If you don't talk, I'm going to try a reaction beam on you. That's supposed to convert your momentum one way to momentum the opposite way, but don't blame me if the effect is considerably more fatal. You in the ship, do you hear me?"

He was fully aware that he was disobeying orders in giving the unidentified ship this much of a chance. If there had been an Earth-based general present, he would have been quite prepared to tell him exactly what he could do with his orders.

After a couple of minutes a voice came on the air. "I hear you." That was all it said, but it was enough to add an unexpected new development to the situation.

The voice was that of a girl.

"How many on board ?" Clement demanded.

"Just me. Lesley Kay. And I understand you're alone on that lump of rock. Cozy, isn't it?"

Crazier and crazier. You didn't find a ship, even a lifeboat, a couple of thousand light-years from anywhere with only a girl on board any more than you found an ocean liner in the middle of the Pacific with only a girl on board.

On the other hand, if there was a bigger ship somewhere in the vicinity, it might seem like a very good idea to send down a girl alone to soften up the solitary ESO on his lonely lump of rock. The idea had been known, and had worked, since the dawn of history.

"Cut the drive," said Clement. "Better still, move back and go into orbit."

"I can't. I don't know how. This thing is set to home on a planet. Your slagheap is the only thing it can find. It's going to land. I can't stop it."

"Tell me how you come to be here," Clement said. If her story made sense, he was left in the same position. But if it didn't, if there was a flaw in it or if it was too starkly incredible, he would be assisted to a decision.

"I was on the Pericles, bound from Klempis to Rigel," the girl said. "She got stuck in hyperspace and we were warned we might land up in the wrong galaxy and not be able to get back. The captain said that anybody who wanted to take the chance of dropping off practically anywhere in this galaxy could be ejected into normal space in a lifeboat. I was the only one who chose the lifeboat."

"And they let you go alone? "

"When it turned out I was the only one, the captain wanted me to stay on the Pericles. But I said he'd given a promise, and in the end they let me go."

Offhand Clement had no idea whether a lifeboat ejected into normal space from a ship on the KlempisRigel run would end up anywhere near ES47. It would require long and careful calculation. But he could and would do it, given time. Both Klempis and Rigel were over twenty thousand light-years away. In hyperspace travel, however, the shortest distance between two points was not a straight line.

Otherwise her story, couched in the completely nontechnical terms which were only to be expected, was not unreasonable, nor was her decision.

Hyperspace fixation was by no means unknown. Exactly the right conditions had to prevail before switching from hyperspace to normal space, or vice versa, was possible, and no captain would attempt it if there was the slightest flaw in his ship's drive. He would have the fault fixed first, even if that meant emerging in Andromeda, and then attempt to get back - Since the chances of ever getting back were about fifty-fifty, Clement could understand the girl's determination to stay in the right galaxy rather than stick with the ship.

"You know I'm the only man on this planetoid," he said cautiously. "How? And what else do you know?"

The girl laughed. "I'm Lesley Kay, I told you. My father's Senator Kay. I know about Experimental Stations and how they're run. I know you're not supposed to let me land - but what harm could I do ?"

She was pretty sure of herself. A spy or saboteur might act that way. So might the daughter of a senator if she believed, as this one evidently did, that everyone must know who Senator Kay was. (Clement did not.)

He made up his mind. It would take more than an hour to check out the position of ES47 with all possible hyperspace loci on the Klempis-Rigel run.

He had not yet decided what he would do if her story was possible. If it was not, he'd blow her out of space.

"I'm signing off," he said abruptly. "There's something I have to do."

"No need to make a special effort for my arrival," she said. "Just sweep the place out and put on your best uniform. I don't expect anything more.. Wait, don't cut me off." Her voice became more serious, more earnest. "Listen, I'm not a tramp, I'm not cheap. But I do want to live. As it happens, I'm entirely in your power. I've told you I can't handle this ship. I can't do anything but let her land. Well. I told you I'm not cheap."

"I've got the message," said Clement dryly. "Want to add that you're eighteen and last year's Miss Universe?"

"I'm seventeen, not eighteen. About my looks, you'll have to decide for yourself."

"So you're ugly."

There was a sudden snap in her voice. "I don't want to get blown to pieces, but I've debased myself as far as I'm going to do, Mr. ESO."

"Duncan Clement," he said, and cut her off.

The task of calculation took longer than he expected. The lifeboat was very near by the time he had established that if an escape vessel left the Pericles during her twentieth day in hyperspace, she could emerge in nonnal space about two hundred million miles from ES47. That was his answer, for what it was worth: he was working in approximations and had only really managed to establish that Lesley Kay could be telling the truth.

He made up his mind. Orders or no orders, he was going to let her land.

All along he had had to fight down his anger at having to make his decision under the Damocles sword of HQ's edict that there was no decision to be made.

He had also had to try hard to do the same as he would have done if the Kay girl had been a man. This was, of course, next to impossible to be sure about. He knew she was a woman and he had not seen a woman for nearly a year. It was one thing to decide quite calmly that for a year he would see no women, and no men either. It was another to bring himself not merely to reject a miraculous offer of female companionship but also to annihilate a girl of seventeen who might well be innocent of everything except approaching too near to an Experimental Weapon-testing Station.

He tried to raise her on the radio but failed. He was not surprised - although lifeboats set as she said this one was set were supposed to land themselves automatically, it was hard to be confident about it. She would be staring at the screens and the controls and wondering if there was anything she should be doing, if she knew how.

Anyway, what was there to say? It was pointless to insist that she should stay well clear of the planetoid. If she was a saboteur she might be able to handle the ship better than she admitted, but if she was a saboteur she wouldn't stay clear. If she was telling the truth, she probably couldn't handle the lifeboat at all.

The mass of ES47 being small, the automatic pilot had no great difficulty in landing the lifeboat. But the little ship landed miles away - ten miles, Clement guessed. He waited for the radio to open up again, asking him to come out and help the girl to safety. His suspicions were further allayed when it did not. On landing, the lifeboat would switch itself off completely, and it would need some know-how - not much but more than

an ordinary girl passenger could be expected to possess - to switch on again.

He switched on the beacon on the roof of the station. If Lesley Kay didn't know enough to put on a spacesuit correctly, or lacked either the strength or the resolution to travel ten miles in inky blackness over icy lava, she was going to die, for ESO Duncan Clement was not going out to get her. What a setup that would be - the ESO out of his station, leaving the place wide open for anyone to walk in - though there were, of course, certain very considerable safeguards.

Clement knew he should send a message to HQ. He did not. Instead he went around the main control room taking a last look at his pin-ups. The walls were covered with them. One by one he tore them down and threw them in the disposal chute. He did not want to give Lesley Kay the impression that he was sex-starved, though this was obviously true. More important, he didn't want her to think she could control the whole situation by wiggling her hips. That wasn't true at all. ESOs were very specially selected men.

Lesley Kay did not die. Seventy minutes later Clement saw her bounding nimbly over the rocks. Ten miles an hour in less than 1/4 G, even over broken rockfaces, was average going for an athletic person of either sex.

He let her operate the air lock herself, let her remove her helmet. When she turned he was holding a gun on her.

She grinned. "Is that necessary? You let me land. Frankly, I was worried about that. But having let me land, you're got going to shoot me now-"

"Get your suit off," he said.

"Willingly. I knew it would be hot but I didn't realize how hot." She put down the box she was carrying. Clement pulled it well clear of her, opened it, rummaged through it. Clothes and a few books. Nothing else.

The girl emerged from the heavy spacesuit as if from a chrysalis. She was a golden blonde, of average height. As far as her face was concerned, it wasn't inconceivable that she could have been a Miss Universe. Her figure - Clement had never seen a girl in a spacesuit beforeat first seemed very heavy, and then too thin.

When she stepped out of the now rigid legs of the suit he not only saw that her figure was gloriously right. He saw nearly everything else. She had stripped to a couple of wisps of black underwear before putting on the suit.

"Now that you've made a full inspection," she said coolly, "may I put on a dress?"

"No," he said, kicking the box away. "Stand there for a minute."

Maybe someone was trying to be very smart, too smart. Could a lonely ESO shoot a beautiful girl who made her first appearance in black underwear? On the other hand, would a beautiful girl who was exactly what Lesley Kay claimed to be, no more and no less, voluntarily introduce herself in a strip of low slung bra and abbreviated panties?

Clement didn't think so. His suspicions, which had shrunk almost to nothing, swelled again.

But at least he could be sure that she had nothing concealed. Nothing in the way of a weapon, at any rate.

"Go in there," he said, pointing with the gun.

She made a move toward the box.

"As you are," he said. "That's the emergency quarters. There's a bed there if you're cold."

"This is silly. You and I are the only two people within-"

"Do as you're told," he said coldly.

She was for the first time angry and didn't mind letting him see it. However, she went through the door he indicated.

Clement locked it behind her. Then he examined every article in the box and took the spacesuit to pieces.

On the face of it, everything backed her story. The spacesuit was engraved Pericles and the serial number was about right. So was the type. Inside one boot was a scrap of paper which turned out to be a piece of towel tissue marked Merino Lines. Pericles was a Merino Lines ship.

The box was a trunk cabinet from the Pericles and the closest examination showed nothing which ought not to be in it.

Having finished his examination of all the girl had brought with her, Clement did what he should have done some considerable time ago - sent a roboradio message to HQ. He had some excuse for the delay - the number of messages he could send was strictly limited.

Ordinary radio was useless over distances running into light-years. Hyperspace acted differently: a different kind of radio wave traveled faster in hyperspace. To send a message, however, Clement had to send a radio capsule into hyperspace. His message, relayed there, traveled a relatively short distance - if you could talk of distance in hyperspace - and was picked up by another radio capsule which then returned itself to normal space near enough Terran HQ to relay the message fairly rapidly.

The system was clumsy and expensive, for although the radio capsules employed were supposed to return automatically to their base, few of them ever made it. Consequently ESOs and HQ stuck to the regular two-monthly bulk transmissions as far as possible. Special messages were kept to an absolute minimum.

So Clement had a good excuse, outside of his decision to let Lesley Kay land at all, for waiting until he had as much as possible to report.

He gave such facts as he possessed as fully and fairly as possible, inquired about recent Peace Convention activities, and asked for instructions. His tone was neither cringing nor aggressive.

Having sent out the radio capsule, he considered going and examining the lifeboat. Not yet, he decided.

Then he opened the door of the emergency quarters and let the girl out.

She was still angry. Without looking at Clement, she went to her box, pulled on a sweater and slacks and thrust her feet into sandals. Then she said: "I hope you're satisfied now. I didn't expect-"

"We'd better get a few things quite clear from the start," said Clement grimly. "You know that I should have destroyed your ship the moment I sighted her."

"Well, that may be the theory, but-"

"It's no theory," Clement snapped. "I'm in the same position as a sentry. If a stranger doesn't obey my command to halt and identify himself, or doesn't have a satisfactory answer, it's my job to shoot him. Or her."

"But I had a satisfactory answer."

"You did not. The only satisfactory answer is that you're empowered to land by my superiors."

"I told you my father-"

"Please rid yourself of your Electra complex. Your father could be the President and it wouldn't make one cent's worth of difference."

She was cool again. "Then why let me land?" "Because I'm crazy, I guess. Because I'm to be relieved in two months and you could be picked up then. Because I didn't want to kill you, or anybody. Because you might be just what you say you are, a space refugee. But, if there's to be any pretense of friendliness between us, you'd better realize that all the time you're here I'm never going to let you out of my sight except when you're in the emergency quarters and locked in."

Lesley laughed. "I'd have thought it would be the other way round," she said meaningly. "That I'd lay the conditions for. ..friendliness, not you."

"That just shows how little you know about the situation."

"You mean you've been here for ten months alone and yet you can act like a jailer when a girl-"

Clement was on his feet, his gun in his hand. "Back where you came from," he said softly. "In there."

She didn't move. "What now?" she said wearily.

"What did I say? Or what did you think I said?"

The gun pointed unwaveringly at her. "You knew I'd been on solitary duty for ten months. How?"

"Because your tour of duty is a year and you told me you were going to be picked up in two months."

The gun dropped. Clement put it away, cursing himself for having put himself at a disadvantage.

"You seem to know a lot about Experimental Stations."

"So I do. What do you want to know? Weapon-testing hasn't been possible on Earth or even in the Solar System for a long time, since wide open spaces ceased to exist and since the weapons to be tested became so numerous and so powerful that millions of cubic miles became necessary. ..So a series of weapon-testing stations was set up out in space, in locations which could only be reached through hyperspace. Each of these stations is manned by one ESO ...Why only one? Because the stations are top secret and the accident rate is high. Screening twenty men per station, before and after their tour of duty, and thinking up lies to explain what happened to them if they get killed, is too big a job. Besides, a station can be keyed to one man but it can't be keyed to twenty-"

"So you know about that, too." He was shocked. What was the use of rigid military security when senators casually passed on top-secret information to their families?

"Oh, sure. So you needn't keep drawing that gun on me. We both know that if you happen to die, the whole station will lock itself up so thoroughly that I'm almost sure to die, too. Even the pantry door wouldn't open for me."

Clement didn't know what to say. If he had been aware in the first instance that this girl knew so much about Experimental (WT) Stations, he could have acted differently. He needn't have tried to be so coldly military, knowing there was nothing to be gained. It was hard suddenly to take up an entirely different attitude.

She seemed to realize this. She stood up. "Now I'll voluntarily retire to my cell," she announced. "I've been awake for twenty-seven hours. Tomorrow we can start not snarling at each other, huh?"

He let her go and once more locked the door behind her.

If she had really been awake for twenty-seven hours, there was a good chance that she would not reappear for twelve hours or so, by which time he should have a reply from Terran HQ.

It was pretty clear that he would have to go out and look at the lifeboat. Lesley Kay could still be a spy or a saboteur. For that matter, there could be men still on the lifeboat, men who were waiting for him to walk into a trap. If so, it was hard to see what good it would do them if he did. Lesley knew that the station was keyed to him so thoroughly that no door would open, no switch would operate except for him.

There was no food in the small suite of rooms in which she was locked. If anything happened to him, she would starve to death.

Clement put on a spacesuit and started out in the direction of the lifeboat.

The weight of responsibility on his shoulders had quite prevented him so far from finding the girl desirable. He wouldn't have thought this possible but it obviously was. Had he not had a strong sense of duty he would not be where he was. The beautiful blonde who had deliberately introduced herself to him looking as desirable as she knew how to be was like, say, one hundred thousand dollars offered to him to betray his country or his world. He could not be tempted because his mind had been made up long ago about any and all temptations.

But that was on the basis that the girl was a liar. If she was not, the one hundred thousand dollars was not offered as a bribe. It was merely there - possibly available, possibly not. In such circumstances it became very easy to desire it ...

As he bounded slowly and lightly from rock to rock, shining his hand torch ahead of him, Clement found himself seeing the blonde twice as vividly in his mind as he had done when she was actually with him. Then she had been first a problem, and a pretty girl a long way second. Now, surely, she was less of a problem.

What harm could she do?

With an effort he banished the picture from his mind and concentrated on what he was doing. Although all falls were light on his nameless, barren kingdom, and he couldn't break his neck even if he fell on it, there was a danger in inertia. He could bound easily from a needle spur of rock, but if his leg sank into a cleft while he had a lot of forward momentum, his suit and his leg could be snapped.

He found the ship only slightly damaged by the landing, but air less. She could not take off again without repairs. That simplified the situation - Lesley could not leave the planetoid in the lifeboat.

A careful examination revealed nothing in any way suspicious. She was a lifeboat from the Pericles, as Lesley said. Her automatic controls were still set on ES47, and he was able to establish that they had been set automatically, too.

On the way back, the image of Lesley as he had first seen her returned again, and this time he did not brush it aside.

Short blond hair, somewhat disordered. An intelligent, sharp, pretty face, rather thin-featured - the face of a girl who looked before she leaped. Pale, smooth, untanned flesh, ample only at bust and hips. Long slim arms, long slim legs.

And now he found her desirable. Now he believed she had been telling the truth. There was a strong connection.

Back at the station he went to bed at once and slept. The girl was a prisoner until he wakened and let her out.

When he did waken he dressed with unusual care, shaved, trimmed his hair. Then he went to the radio. The printer was still silent, although an answer to his message could be expected about now.

He went back to the main control room. Faintly he heard taps which indicated that Lesley wanted to come out. Ignoring them, he went back to the printer.

It started to chatter as he looked at it. The first words were:

EXECUTE THE GIRL CALLING HERSELF LESLEY KAY. THIS IS AN ORDER, AND MUST BE CARRIED OUT AT ONCE. YOUR OWN LIFE DEPENDS UPON IT.

There was more about the present situation. He waited until the printer arrived at general topics, then tore off what had already been sent and ignored the rest. For hours now the printer would go on tapping. Although two weeks remained to the date of the next and final bi-monthly communique, the Communications Officer naturally took this opportunity of sending all the routine memoranda as well as the emergency orders.

Somewhere within a few million miles the radio cap. sule Clement had sent out, having exchanged his brief message for this plethora of words, was beaming its heavy load to the printer. In the next week or two it might or might not manage to return to the station. If it did, it could be used again.

For the third time Clement scanned the meat of the messages the printer had run off in the first few seconds of transmission.

The Peace Convention had declared war on Experimental (WT) Stations - these "forts in space," it had called them. If they were not closed at once, the Convention would close them.

"What purpose is there in the development of even more terrible weapons?" the Convention demanded rhetorically. "No purpose but purposes of war. Yet the weapon-testing function of these storehouses of horror is only secondary. Their real function is to enslave the galaxy. They are forts where no forts would be needed unless the warmongers planned a colossal future war on the whole of creation . . ."

There was a lot of this, fairly persuasive. Why set up scores of one-man weapon-testing stations with spare accommodation, the Convention demanded, if not as military outposts? Weapon-testing could be accomplished much more quickly and efficiently by larger stations with more personnel.

There was not a word about the possibility that at some future date nonhuman civilizations might be encountered somewhere in the galaxy. The Convention either rejected the possibility as fantastic propaganda or ignored it because it might appear to weaken their case.

Fanatics or not, the Peace Convention could be dangerous. As far as Clement was concerned, their motives were irrelevant. All that mattered was whether their threats were just threats or something more. He was prepared to believe that they were a great deal more.

Important as the information about the Convention might be, of more immediate concern was the material relating to ES47 and to Lesley Kay - if she was Lesley Kay.

"It has not yet been possible to check out the Senator Kay angle. Probably there is such a senator and he has a daughter called Lesley. Nor has the passenger list of the Pericles come in yet. It will, of course, be several weeks, perhaps months, before the truth or otherwise of the Pericles story you have been told can be definitely established."

"However, there seems little doubt that your visitor is a Peace Convention agent, probably Ruth Brown (description appended). Confidential: two other stations have failed to make their regular reports. It is feared that Peace Convention saboteurs may have succeeded in destroying them."

"Although you have disobeyed a strict, clear order, no disciplinary action will be taken over your allowing this woman to land, since you were unaware of the most recent developments. But you must execute her at once and destroy her ship after checking that it is safe to do so."

There was more, of course, much more. The description of Ruth Brown did not clinch matters. Ruth Brown was eighteen, five feet eight, brunette, one hundred thirty-five pounds . . . This alone, without the rest, showed that Lesley was not Ruth Brown.

Less than twenty-four hours ago Clement had been trying to reach an honest decision about Lesley. He had reached it: she was what she said she was. (One niggling doubt: did a girl who was not trying to vamp a man make her first appearance in black underwear?)

Now he was told to execute her.

It would have been easier to execute her if he had never let her land. Far, far easier. And even then it would have been difficult.

He checked his gun, crossed the room and unlocked the door. Lesley emerged. She was wearing a one-piece blouse and slacks outfit sober in every respect save that the neckline plunged sensationally to the pit of her stomach.

And she was smiling. "Start again?" she suggested.

"No," Clement said bleakly. "Read those."

She sat down at the desk and picked up the papers one by one. After glancing at the first she looked up, startled, but when Clement said nothing she resumed reading.

"Well?" she said at last. "I have no choice."

"Of course you have," she said irritably. "There's always a choice. And you needn't pretend you're going to obey orders. If you were, you'd have shot me the moment I appeared."

He raised the gun and aimed between her eyes. For a moment her face broke up, went to pieces. Then she said semi-hysterically: "Look, I don't want to die, but make up your mind. If you're going to do it, now or ever, stop playing with me. Pull the trigger and that lets me out. But if you don't pull the trigger, put the gun away and drop the subject once and for all."

The gun still pointed between her eyes. Surely she must break, if she was a saboteur? If she did, she was dead. Clement had no compunction about killing spies or saboteurs.

"Can't you do anything to assure yourself that I'm telling the truth?" she asked. "Haven't you a lie-detector? Scopolamine? Sodium pentothal?"

"No. We don't expect company," said Clement dryly. "If I were to leave you alive, it would only be for two months or less. When I'm relieved you'd be shot. And maybe me with you."

"Don't be a fool," she snapped. "They tell you now to kill me. But once the relief ship turns up, there won't be any danger any more. They'll take us away and they'll check on me and find I was telling the truth."

He was compelled to admit to himself that this was true. When the relief ship arrived, her captain, with a crew of twenty, would be utterly in control of the situation. Any threat represented by a single unarmed girl would be laughably minute. Even if she were proved to be a spy and a saboteur there would no longer be any question of summary execution. She would be taken to Earth for questioning.

"Tell me about the Peace Convention," he said.

He was alert for any sign of hesitation, of uncertainty. She would be making a bad mistake if she stalled, pretending she knew nothing about the Convention. The memoranda she had just read should have told her a good deal. And it would be strange if a girl who knew so much about Experimental Stations should be wholly ignorant of the Peace Convention and its aims.

"It used to organize disarmament marches," she said steadily. She seemed to be recovering from her temporary breakdown, although Clement's gun still pointed at her head. "It campaigned for peace alliances with everybody. For the abandonment of all weapon-testing programs. Then it split into two. There was a non-active group carrying on the same propaganda work. And an active undercover group which organized acts of sabotage against war materiel and potential in all countries and colonies."

"In all countries?"

"The Convention is stronger in some countries than others, naturally. Strongest in the freest countries and colonies."

"That points a moral, doesn't it?"

"That the freest countries are the most free, you mean? And the most just? That's a pretty obvious moral, isn't it?"

"Why aren't the people operating openly as Peace Convention agitators arrested?"

"Sometimes they are. But they can usually prove they have no direct contact with the active, undercover group. France and Italy have declared the whole organization illegal. The main result is that in those countries there's no possibility of parleying with the Convention. There's a lot of public sympathy with the Convention. After all, there's no war, no particular threat of war, only minor local disagreements and some friction with certain colonies. When War Departments are strong and there's no war, the tendency is for society to develop in the direction of national-socialism."

"How do you feel about the Peace Convention?"

Although she spoke calmly and clearly, there was no doubt that she was aware she was on trial. "Much as I feel about communism," she said. "Theoretically it's a good idea. In practice it's dangerous. You can agree with most of the Convention's propaganda without agreeing about what they do."

"How about the possibility of another intelligent race?"

"Huh?"

"Suppose there's another intelligent race in the galaxy. Wouldn't that make a difference? Wouldn't you as a human being be glad that these forts in space existed?"

She was frowning. "But there isn't another intelligent race in the galaxy. We've been running wild for centuries and never found one."

"Don't you know that so far we've only made the lightest, slightest contact with one-five-thousandth of the worlds in the galaxy? Don't you know that three times survey ships have found remains of nonhuman cultures only a few thousand years extinct - a mere instant of galactic time? Don't you know that six months ago an exploration ship found a planet abandoned only a thousand years ago - abandoned, indicating that the race concerned went elsewhere in the galaxy?"

She seemed to be forgetting for the moment that she was on trial. She was pensive. "Well, it might make a difference. ..But if there were another race about our level, would it be a good idea for us to shoot first? For Experimental Stations to blast their ships out of space?"

"If you know so much about these stations, you should know that while ESOs are ordered to blast unknown Terran ships, they have an absolutely free hand if aliens are encountered. But if they need it, they possess the ultimate in attack and defense

"Why not tell all this to the Peace Convention instead of to me?"

"You think it would be a good idea?"

"I think it would be an extremely good idea."

He was satisfied - again. Thrusting his gun in his pocket, he held out his hand.

She didn't take it. "Sorry," she said, with a nervous laugh. "I'm not used to being threatened one minute and being all pals together the next. You've been threatening to kill me since I arrived. You've got to give me time to get used to the idea of not being murdered."

He nodded. "Fair enough. It'll take me a while to get used to the idea of not having to murder you."

Clement's last statement was not strictly correct. He had decided not to kill Lesley; this did not mean that he didn't have to kill her.

He sent no further message to HQ. The one they were expecting was that the girl had duly been executed. Since he could not report this, he remained silent.

In due course HQ would ask him point-blank if the order had been carried out. But delay, Clement thought, was to his and to Lesley's advantage.

There would be time for HQ to find out more. And there was time for him to find out more.

It would normally have been assumed that a man and girl shut up together for weeks on end in a space station many light-years from other human beings would slide inexorably into sexual intimacy. Indeed, Lesley admitted that she had assumed this herself, and that it was partly in brash acknowledgment of the fact that she had abandoned modesty at the very beginning.

But it made a difference that Clement had very nearly killed her, and was still under orders to do so.

"I don't hate you," she told him frankly, "but I can't pretend to love you. Rationally I can make allowances, tell myself you were only doing your duty and that you're taking a big risk by letting me live. But whenever you come near me I remember that you nearly killed me, that you're still under orders to kill me."

She talked freely with him, however. And she helped him to run the tests he had to do. Having refused to execute her, Clement didn't think it did any extra harm to allow her to witness tests she wasn't supposed to see of weapons which no civilian was supposed to know about.

Mostly they tested remote-control apparatus-fuses, roboradio devices, spacemines and hyper-spacemines. The weapon-testing program was designed to cover the whole field of defense and attack so that in the event of conflict standard devices could be used until effective countermeasures were discovered, and could then instantly be replaced with other devices based on different principles.

The hyper-spacemine - usually abbreviated to HSM - was the newest and most secret of the weapons entrusted to Clement. Radar and other warning apparatus worked only in normal space or, modified, in hyperspace - not in both. A mine in hyperspace which could be triggered by a ship in normal space was a weapon which could be extremely effective within its limitations. Various methods of setting off HSMs were under test.

Lesley worked quickly and reliably on everything Clement gave her to do. She seemed, however, to have no particular interest in weapons.

"Boys play with guns, knives, bows and arrows, spears and swords," she said. "Girls play with dolls. I was normal. I guess you were, too."

"I guess you were, at that," Clement said thought. fully. "Tell me ...something's been puzzling me. Why did you pull that line at first about being the daughter of a famous senator, and not lately?"

"My father is a famous senator. He-"

"That's not what I mean. At first you boasted about him like a kid at school - I'm important because Daddy's important. My Daddy's more important than yours. Now you've dropped it. You haven't mentioned the famous Senator Kay for days."

She shrugged. "Don't be naive. I knew all along you weren't supposed to let me land. Maybe the fact that there would be trouble later if you blasted me would affect you, maybe it wouldn't, but it was worth trying."

He moved behind her, put his arms round her. She was as stiff and cold as a statue. And it might be significant that since the last inquisition she had never appeared in frankly provocative dress.

He dropped his arms. "So I'm not forgiven"

"I know what you're waiting for," she retorted. "You're waiting for the next message from HQ. So am I. I've got my fingers crossed. Maybe when it arrives I'll find a gun pointed at my head again."

The message arrived an hour later. WHY HAVE YOU NOT CONFIRMED EXECUTION? PLEASE DO SO AT ONCE.

There was a description of Lesley Kay, who was the daughter of Senator Kay and who was entered as a passenger on the Pericles. Not unexpectedly, there was as yet no news of the Pericles; it would have been strange if there had been. She might be having a normal flight or she might have run into trouble as Lesley claimed.

The description of Lesley Kay said she was eighteen, five feet five and a half, blonde, one hundred ten pounds. It also said she had an appendix scar.

"Have you an appendix scar?" Clement demanded.

"If I have, does it prove anything?" she asked warily.

"Look, this message confirms nearly everything I told you Yet your bosses still want me executed What do I have to do to-"

"Have you an appendix scar?" Clement repeated.

She hesitated and then said: "No. They've got that wrong. I did have an appendix operation, but I had treatment to avoid a scar."

"I notice, too," said Clement quietly, "that your hair is coming up dark at the roots."

"How many blondes are real blondes?"

"I don't know. But I think HQ would check whether Lesley Kay was a real blonde or not."

"So we're on the merry-go-round again," she said wearily.

"No. The Peace Convention people are nuts. I've talked to you long enough to know you're not a nut."

"You mean. ..?" She was incredulous.

"I mean we're waiting for the relief ship. They can figure out what to do with you."

There was more warmth between them after that. But the assumed inevitable still didn't happen. She didn't even let him touch her. Not until Clement sent a message to HQ which read:

Lesley Kay has not been executed and will not be executed by me. When I volunteered for this job I expected loneliness and a certain amount of danger and a good slice of loot in compensation. I did not volunteer as a killer of unarmed girls.

Since I guess I'm in trouble anyway I might as well start preparing my defense. I have already been exonerated for letting Miss Kay land, so my defense concerns only my failure to kill her after meeting her.

ESOs are selected very carefully. Certain qualities are looked for like honesty and integrity. Well, the kind of man you pick isn't the kind of man who can blindly obey a murder order independent of his own conclusions. My conclusion is that the woman with me is Lesley Kay and that she never had any intention of killing me. You won't care particularly if I'm wrong and she kills me, so long as the experimental program and ES47 are not affected. I do. You're not prepared to risk this station. I'm risking my life.

I realize I can't bargain with HQ, but I'm trying anyway. If the girl with me is a saboteur and has plans to destroy the station somehow I won't have any charges to answer because I'll be dead. If she isn't, then the relief ship will be able to pick up both her and me, and no harm done. In the latter case, why not go easy on me?

He showed this message to Lesley, and she let him kiss her that night. She seemed surprised when it was he who broke the clinch, apparently finding it quite easy.

"I guess I don't understand you, Duncan," she said. "You seem to have normal instincts but supernormal self-control. If I'd been here as long as you have and a man turned up, I ... well, you know what I mean."

"No," said Clement. "Tell me what you mean." "Hell, I'm not asking you to make a pass at me, but I expected it all the same"

"I know."

"Don't I attract you or what?"

"You attract me all right."

"Then what? Are all ESOs like you? "

"In that respect, yes. They have to be."

"Who replaces you? Do you know?"

"A guy called Ray Lerner."

"You know him? What's he like ?"

"Like me, I guess. Quiet, fairly self-sufficient. Stable. Possessed of a certain independence of mind."

"And undersexed?"

"Well, he's got a wife and three kids."

She was startled. "And he volunteers for a year alone in space?"

"The loot is a consideration. It'll buy him a house and pay for the education of all the kids. And by the way, I'm not undersexed either. Just patient."

"You can say that again. If it's any satisfaction to you, it's working."

"It's a great satisfaction to me."

She clearly expected more, but he dropped the subject as if it were of no importance.

Later she appeared for the first time since her early hours at the station in provocative clothes. She wore black net pajamas through which pale flesh gleamed wickedly.

Clement still didn't do anything. But he knew what was happening.

She was going to pieces in a fairly simple feminine way.

Some men could take loneliness; few women could. What worried her was not that he had no interest in her. It was that he was deeply interested, admitted it, showed it, and seemed to have no difficulty in doing nothing about it.

They had changed places. It was no longer she who was stiff and cold as a statue. Clement was a warmer statue, but still a statue.

The next message from HQ arrived opportunely. Lesley had gone to bed, locked as usual in the emer. gency quarters. She could not feel annoyed over this: no door in the station opened except for Clement.

The message read:

TWO STATIONS ALREADY KNOWN TO BE DESTROYED, THREE MORE DO NOT ANSWER. FOUR SHIPS ATTEMPTING TO LAND ON OTHER STATIONS DESTROYED BEFORE LANDING.

IT IS CLEAR THAT THE THREATENED ALL-OUT OFFENSIVE IS ACTUALLY BEING MADE ON EXPERIMENTAL STATIONS.

IRONCLAD INSTRUCTION NOW IN FORCE: ALL SHIPS SIGHTED TO BE DESTROYED WHENEVER THEY COME WITHIN RANGE.

COINCIDENCE OF LESLEY KAY'S ARRIVAL AT TIME OF THIS OFFENSIVE TOO GREAT. IT IS ACCEPTED HERE THAT PEACE CONVENTION ACTED AGAINST TEN STATIONS CONCURRENTLY. PRESENT SCORE: FIVE TO THEM, FOUR TO US, ONE - YOU - UNDECIDED.

OKAY, DO NOT KILL KAY. BUT OBTAIN FROM HER BY TORTURE IF NECESSARY ALL SHE KNOWS ABOUT PEACE CONVENTION PLANS. THEN LOCK HER IN EMERGENCY QUARTERS PENDING ARRIVAL OF RELIEF SHIP, WHICH HAS ALREADY LEFT.

"Which has already left!" Clement murmured to himself as the printer ceased chattering. She would arrive any day.

The latest message did not change the situation as far as he was concerned. He was not unduly stubborn; he took his time over making up his mind and stuck to his decision, whatever it was, until absolutely forced to change it.

The printer chattered again. Coming over was a detailed description of Lesley Kay's appendix scar. The source of information was not given.

Clement unlocked the door of Lesley's bedroom and burst in. She was asleep, but she opened her eyes as he put on the light.

"Well, weIl,' she said in a not displeased tone. "At last the mountain comes to Momma."

"This is a terrible thing I'm going to do, lady," he said, "but basically I'm a scientist. That means I check everything."

He tore the sheets from her. Rather unexpectedly, she was in sober, repressive pajamas. He parted the two pieces and examined the right side of her abdomen.

The smooth, pale flesh was quite unblemished.

Shocked though Clement was, it took him only a fraction of a second to reverse his attitude.

"Get up," he said curtly.

She blinked at him as if wondering if she was dreaming. He pulled her roughly to her feet.

"Up to now," he said grimly, "you were a pretty girl I liked, and might have gone on liking even if you were mixed up somehow with the Peace Convention. Now you're an enemy with information which I've got to have. What are the plans to destroy this station?"

"I don't know what you're-"

He swore. He would have liked to hit her brutally to show her that she wasn't playing games any more, but couldn't do it. He knew he was capable of killing her, yet he was not capable of brutality.

He dragged her through to the air lock, still in her pajamas. There he pointed to her spacesuit, laid ready for her.

"Get into that," he said curtly.

"What for?"

"Because if you don't I'll knock you unconscious and put you in it."

"I don't believe you can go through with this, Duncan," she said steadily.

He swore again. "Will you never realize that there's more in life than playing games? Get into that suit."

"Why? What are you going to do?"

"Kill you if you don't tell me every thing you know. Your friends have killed five ESOs already, do you know that? You're trying to kill either me or Ray Lerner, I don't know which-"

"Why Ray Lerner?" she asked sharply, caught off balance.

"Brave idealists like you are often prepared to kill for the greatest good of the greatest number, as you see it, but you usually fix things so that you yourselves don't have to die as well. Get into that suit."

"No."

He drew his arm back. She read in his eyes his complete determination, and turned hurriedly to the suit. Two minutes later she was encased in it except for the helmet.

"Right," said Clement harshly. "You're going outside. Conscious or unconscious, I don't care. You have air for exactly twenty minutes. That's not nearly enough time for you to reach the lifeboat. If you don't come back in, you die. And you don't get back in here unless you're prepared to tell me everything you know."

"You won't go through with it. I know you. You're not a killer."

"But you are. And even a non-killer can kill in self-defense. That's what I'm doing now."

"You won't die. You can't die, because I-" She stopped.

"Go on."

But she remained silent.

So he fastened her helmet. Protected by her suit, she tried to struggle, but he showed her that his strength and agility more than made up for the protection her suit afforded her. He pushed her into the air lock and operated the outer doors.

Then he sat down and waited.

He didn't have to wait long. Within three minutes she was tapping on the inside door.

Clement let her in, but the moment her helmet was off he said grimly: "If you're stalling, you go right out again. With no more air."

Incredibly, she was smiling. "Help me to get out of this suit."

He did so. Her attitude puzzled him. He wasn't even sure what it was, not having the key to figure it out.

The suit removed, she said: "You startled me. I didn't have a chance to think. I didn't realize quite what. .."

She rolled down the elastic of her pants. Once, twice, she brushed the flesh of her belly roughly with the side of her hand. Then she took it away.

Clearly marked in red was exactly the scar which had been described in the last message.

Clement stared at it. Already the red marks were beginning to fade. Yet there was no trickery. It was impossible.

"I guess I have to say I'm sorry again," he said quietly. "You're Lesley Kay all right."

"Yes. You're really satisfied this time?" She fixed her clothes.

He nodded.

"Good," she said with relief, "because I thought I'd left it too late. I've been hoping for days I wouldn't have to tell you a thing. But I knew all along I'd have to."

Clement was not given to demonstration. He waited.

"You accused me of playing games," she said. "That was fair. You might have called me a silly kid, too. I told you I'm seventeen. Back on Earth the Peace Convention attitude sounded utterly right, the whole thing seemed like a great adventure. I was ripe to be used, and they used me. I still felt the same thrill on the Pericles, and when the job their engineer had done on the drive worked exactly as they said it would, when they said it would, I felt I was part of a great invincible shining machine working for the good of humanity. When I made my big appearance here in my undies I was partly responding to a dare and partly acting my thrilling seductive scene."

"But you were... weIl, you weren't a kid. You weren't playing any games. You were real. Gradually the thing ceased to be a great adventure, and all I'd believed so easily began to wear a little thin, and I saw there was another side to it, and you told me about Ray Lerner and his wife and three kids . . ."

Clement remained silent, knowing she would have to fill the vacuum with words.

"And then when the whole thing had collapsed anyway," she said, suddenly near to tears, "You told me how brave idealists were often prepared to kill, but usually fixed things so that they didn't have to die themselves. That made me feel about one centimeter high, and there was no game any more."

The relief ship arrived two days later. Captain Walters came down himself, alone; the situation was awkward and he didn't shirk handling it himself.

He was relieved to find Clement alone in the main control room and apparently quite rational. "Where's the girl?" Walters demanded.

Clement ignored the question. "Captain, you've got a lot of responsibility. I want you on my side."

"I'm making no promises, Clement."

"Maybe you have to, captain."

"How do you mean ?"

"There's a bomb on this planetoid which will blow the whole station to pieces in about three months time - unless you do a deal."

"I don't have to do a deal. I'll find the bomb."

Clement gestured. "Out there, captain?"

Walters was silenced. The planetoid consisted of holes. Big holes, small holes. Holes that went straight down, holes that ran horizontal, holes than ran upwards. Holes a foot deep, twenty feet deep, fifty yards long. A bomb pushed a mere arm's length into a cavity might never be seen again. A bomb pushed into a gently-sloping cleft might slide down a hundred feet and would certainly never be seen again.

"We have detectors," Walters said at last.

"You have my personal word for it that all detectors you have available will set off the bomb. And you can't do a thing about the three-month fuse. It's an organic break-down fuse, sealed off and heat-insulated, naturally, and anything you might try out on the organic fuse will set off the other fuses. But the bomb, if you can find it, can be safely picked up and carried anywhere you want it."

"Hell, Clement, what's this you're giving me? Where's the girl? Dead? Alive? Hurt? Gone?"

Clement answered indirectly. "I want to do a deal, captain. The girl for the bomb."

"You know where it is?"

"No, but she does."

"It's not on the lifeboat?"

"No. It's hidden, set to go off in three months, by which time there's a chance, or there would have been a chance, that the explosion would be put down to accident - a slight error on Ray Lerner's part."

"We'll still find out from the girl-"

"No, captain, you won't. Lesley's been treated so that truth drugs won't work in the next six months, they'll simply destroy her brain. And other methods don't work. I tried them."

"You mean torture? " said the captain bluntly.

"By telling her about Ray Lerner and his wife and children," said Clement blandly. "She didn't mind killing an ESO she knew nothing about. But once she knew about Ray Lerner, she broke down. She's a good kid and she is Senator Kay's daughter. His only daughter."

That registered with Walters. He rallied, however. "Nevertheless, she didn't tell you where she'd placed the bomb?"

"No. She wants an amnesty. You can't blame her, can you? She'll finger the bomb if you promise - "

"It's impossible, Clement."

"Then the station goes up in three months," said Clement regretfully. "No use looking for the bomb, as a glance at the terrain will show you. She could have hidden a thousand bombs. Besides, if you use detectors, it goes off-"

"You're in this with her," Walters said accusingly. "You put her up to it. The amnesty business, I mean."

"Having learned all she knows - except where the bomb is. My report on the Peace Convention should be very useful, captain. She hasn't given names, but there's plenty about plans and methods."

"I want to see her."

"Listen, captain. She's seventeen. Remember the kind of things we did when we were seventeen ?"

"I can't do what you're asking."

"You'd rather the bomb was left where it is than have her show you?"

Walters breathed hard. "I'm warning you, Clement, if you do get what you want ...The girl may go free, but we'll throw the book at you."

Lesley was subdued on the way back to Earth. "I still feel one centimeter high," she said. "And shrinking. How could I be so wrong, when I was so sure-"

"What's a murder more or less when ideals are at stake?" said Clement tolerantly, looking do\vn at her. "I can't understand how you. ..why you-"

"Why I now exhibit normal interest in you, even to the point of possibly having to marry you? I don't understand it either. But I'm going to kiss you again. Nobody will ever believe I resisted so long."

A little later, Clement kept an appointment in the captain's cabin with Walters.

"I'm writing my report," Walters said stiffly. "I want to know if there's anything you have to say."

"Yes," said Clement, "I want to tell you why what happened was almost inevitable."

"Huh?"

"I want to point out that the Convention's sabotage efforts succeeded to the extent that they did because of the method of selection of ESOs. Among other things."

Walters' eyes narrowed. "I'm listening. If you can make your point, Clement, it may help."

"ESOs are solitary, independent men. They may not be geniuses, but they're used to making up their own minds. There's nobody to apply to. All the decisions they make for a year, big and little, some affecting the whole testing program, are their own. They're selected to work autonomously."

"Right," Walters admitted.

"HQ made its big mistake instructing ESOs to destroy any ship sighted. Hell, we always make up our own minds. We're chosen for that reason. We're not privates who don't move until the corporal tells us, having been told by the sergeant, having been told by the lieutenant, having been told by the captain, who perhaps was permitted to think for himself. Leave us to decide and we'll make better decisions, because we're that sort of men. The only thing we can't handle is millstones on our minds.

"When I sighted a lifeboat, I knew orders were to destroy it. But was that a good order? ESOs are instructed to question orders, captain. If the testing program mapped out for them doesn't seem right, they're supposed to change it. They're trusted to act independently if and when the greatest, most significant event in human history happens - the first encounter with another comparable race. It's a shocking mistake not to trust them with something much less. . .When Lesley's ship was coming in, I guess I'd have blown it up if I hadn't been ordered to do it and at the same time ordered to question all orders. Still with me?"

Walters grunted. "Maybe we will make a change."

"I think you should, captain."

"You'll get off, Clement," Walters said grudgingly. "I think so, too."

"You'll get off because of something you don't even remember. In your training, in every ESO's training, you're told to fire a weapon which, if what you've been told is correct, will explode before it gains momentum. If you do as you're told, you're out."

"I had forgotten that," Clement admitted."

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